Hu Tiehua had been staring at the people on the boat for quite some time.
He was lying motionless on the deck, unable to move, and could only watch helplessly as the men discussed things beside him.
The King of Kucha sent three warriors to escort Hu Tiehua with valuables to trade with Shi Guanyin for the Star of Bliss. However, the three warriors harbored rebellious intentions and drugged Hu Tiehua.
After subduing Qu Wurong, Chu Liuxiang and Ji Bingyan carried the drugged Hu Tiehua onto the boat. Ji Bingyan released her grip as soon as she stepped onto the deck, silently sneering at Hu Tiehua's angry glare. Chu Liuxiang, on the other hand, was more considerate, gently lowering Hu Tiehua's upper body.
Hu Tiehua lay on the deck, sulking silently. Ji Bingyan ignored him. Chu Liuxiang gave him a helpless smile and then continued talking with the other two.
snort.
Hu Tiehua stubbornly refused to participate in their conversation. Her round, bright eyes darted around, and she noticed that the monk Chu Liuxiang had introduced, who had returned to secular life, was not there.
Speaking of that young monk, who had only recently left the monastic life, why did his hair become so smooth and silky black? It didn't even look like a wig...
Hu Tiehua thought about this and that, refusing to listen to the conversation about the Star of Bliss that was taking place not far away. Chu Liuxiang saw that he was still sulking, gave a wry smile, and was about to comfort him when he heard a muffled thud coming from the wooden steps of the cabin.
Everyone looked in that direction. Yan Liang placed his hand on the bag, met their gaze with a smile, and said in a light tone, "I found some food. Want some?"
The bag was bulging, and by any measure it didn't look like "some" food.
Chu Liuxiang smiled and said, "So you went to find food? Thank you."
Earlier, when Chu Liuxiang and Ji Bingyan carried Hu Tiehua onto the boat, they only saw Yidianhong and Qu Wurong, who seemed to be in a strange mood, but Yan Liang was nowhere to be seen. Yidianhong said he had gone to the cabin, but now that the other party had come up with a large amount of food, it cleared up Chu Liuxiang's doubts.
Qu Wurong watched coldly as the group took out fruit and dry rations from the bag, trying to avoid seeing them. She turned her face away, but her gaze met that of Yidianhong. Qu Wurong's heart skipped a beat, and she quickly looked away, remembering what Yidianhong had said.
With his red eyes fixed on Qu Wurong without blinking, Yan Liang glanced up at the two of them, then silently lowered his head to get some fruit—that was why he had run into the cabin to scavenge for food on the ship earlier.
He was like a 300-watt light bulb between the two men, shining brightly and illuminating the entire ship.
Even without looking behind him, Chu Liuxiang knew what was behind him. Recalling the face revealed when Qu Wurong's veil was blown off by the wind, he felt a mix of emotions.
Shi Guanyin cruelly disfigured Qiu Lingsu out of jealousy of her beauty. Qu Wurong must have also been disfigured because of jealousy of her beauty.
How could there be such a cruel and vicious woman in this world?
He was somewhat lost in thought, his hand still reaching into the sack, when he suddenly touched something cold and hard. He pulled it out, puzzled.
It was a very heavy and large gold nugget.
He looked down into the sack. After the fruit and dry food were taken away, the contents at the bottom were revealed: gold nuggets just like those in Chu Liuxiang's hand.
Chu Liuxiang: "..."
Yan Liang's tone remained light and cheerful: "Gold, do you want it?"
Ji Bingyan said, "After you returned to secular life, have you forgotten the principle that ill-gotten gains are not worth taking?"
Yan Liang argued vehemently, "I've heard you say that Shi Guanyin is not a good person, and her wealth must be ill-gotten gains. If I take her ill-gotten gains, then they are ill-gotten gains of the ill-gotten." He repeated "ill-gotten gains" four times, and finally concluded, "They are just ordinary wealth."
Double negatives indicate affirmation, no problem.
Ji Bingyan stared at him, unable to believe that there could be someone in this world who could make such fallacies sound so righteous.
Seeing Ji Bingyan's expression, Hu Tiehua burst into laughter: "You dead rooster, I never thought you'd be speechless one day!"
He laughed smugly, as if he were the one who had rendered Ji Bingyan speechless.
Ji Bingyan casually stuffed a fruit into his mouth and sneered at him: "What's so happy about being able to talk? Now you can't even speak."
Hu Tiehua: "Ugh ugh ugh ugh!!"
Chu Liuxiang put the gold ingot back, not mentioning why a monk who had returned to secular life was so adept at this kind of work. Instead, he reached for a piece of fruit and said, "You have nothing to do with Shi Guanyin. You don't need to come with us to her lair."
Ji Bingyan said coldly, "Let's not even talk about the fact that he doesn't need to come with us to Shi Guanyin's lair. Right now, we don't even know how to get to Shi Guanyin's lair."
After Yan Liang released the blood vessels of several people, they knocked the people on the ship unconscious with a single palm strike and hid them. After Qu Wurong boarded the ship, they subdued her. Now the ship is moored in the desert.
Upon hearing this, Chu Liuxiang looked at Qu Wurong, but the girl in white met his gaze with a cold expression and remained silent.
A moment of silence fell over the room.
"Divine calculation, one divination for five coins." Yan Liang broke the heavy atmosphere by suddenly taking out his fortune-telling banner, waving it, and the yellow flag fluttered in the wind.
"I can figure out where you want to go."
"...You're still acting recklessly at a time like this?" Ji Bingyan sneered. "Don't think you can act recklessly just because you're young."
Young?
Yan Liang, who was actually approaching thirty, blinked and smiled, "So you think I'm still very young? Thank you, thank you."
...No need to thank me!
Ji Bingyan finally realized that it was difficult to have a proper conversation with this person.
They had another layer of speculation about Yan Liang's identity based on his words about his age, but that wasn't the point at the moment. The point was how to get to Shi Guanyin's lair.
Yan Liang did some serious calculations with his fingers, and under the gaze of the four people (besides Hu Tiehua, the farthest place he could see was the white clouds on the horizon), he pointed and said in a profound and mysterious way, "Proceed in the northwest direction."
Ji Bingyan said coldly, "That's the southwest direction."
Yan Liang withdrew his hand and readily agreed: "It's in the northwest direction. I just pointed randomly."
Qu Wurong's expression shifted slightly, because the direction the young man pointed to was indeed where Shi Guanyin's lair was located.
Yidianhong noticed her change, thought for a moment, then pulled a burly man who they had knocked unconscious from the deck and said, "We'll find out after interrogation."
The big man was both afraid of Shi Guanyin and afraid of being threatened by them. In the end, he could not withstand the pressure and pointed out the direction of Shi Guanyin's lair with great grievance, and was forced to take on the responsibility of sailing the boat.
The interrogation results plunged Chu Liuxiang and the others into an eerie silence.
The reason was that the direction the big man pointed out was indeed northwest... and the big ship was indeed sailing in the northwest direction.
Yan Liang laughed, his smugness palpable, which Ji Bingyan found utterly grating.
"What's there to be proud of? I suppose it was just something said offhand."
Ji Bingyan's tone was icy. He always felt that this person was untrustworthy, of unknown origin, and knew some strange things, even unraveling their acupoints—a method of acupoints developed by Shi Guanyin, which was difficult for ordinary people to unravel.
Yan Liang raised his index finger and shook it, saying earnestly, "Why can't you be proud of yourself if you earn a living through your own abilities? Now that the facts are before you, Brother Ji, you should believe it."
Ji Bingyan: "...Who is your brother Ji? Don't presume to claim kinship."
Chu Liuxiang and Hu Tiehua were both enjoying the show and the audio. Ji Bingyan, with her aloof personality and perpetually cold tone, was surprisingly roused into talking by a stranger, which was quite a sight.
"Where is the grandson that Brother Yan is looking for for that old man?" Chu Liuxiang laughed for a while, then remembered the important matter and asked him, "Shi Guanyin's lair must be fraught with danger. You should get off the ship and go find him as soon as possible. There's no need for you to come with us."
Yan Liang's expression was somewhat subtle: "The person I'm looking for is also in the northwest."
Moreover, judging from the distance displayed on the missing person tracking device... Li Ganqing is in Shi Guanyin's lair.
Chu Liuxiang was taken aback, feeling that it was too much of a coincidence.
The ship was still sailing when Yan Liang took another piece of fruit and started eating it. The others also ate a few.
Fruit is a rare commodity in the desert, yet Stone Guanyin's boat had so much of it, demonstrating her enormous human, material, and financial resources.
Yan Liang, munching on fruit, looked at Chu Liuxiang and asked the question that had been puzzling him for a long time: "I've always wanted to ask you something, what happened between you and Senior Brother Wuhua that day, General Chu?"
Chu Liuxiang paused, then smiled wryly, "Don't you know?"
"I don't know." Yan Liang shook his head. "The sect leader didn't say. He only told us to bury Senior Brother Wuhua."
Chu Liuxiang sighed: "If Master Tianfeng is unwilling to talk about it, I am also not very willing to talk about it."
Wu Hua committed suicide. He was the son of Tianfeng Shisilang, but the details of his actions did not spread throughout the martial arts world.
After resolving the matter of Wuhua, Chu Liuxiang returned directly to the ship. He then rushed to the Great Desert because of the matter involving Su Rongrong and the other two, and was unwilling to mention it, which led to the only news circulating in the martial arts world being that the monk Wuhua had died suddenly.
Yan Liang was puzzled, but seeing Chu Liuxiang's barely concealed melancholy, he didn't press the matter. Wu Hua was exceptionally handsome, and Yan Liang was simply curious as to why he had committed suicide, but since the person in the know had a reason he didn't want to say, there was no point in asking further.
"Brother Yan's return to secular life... could it be related to Wu Hua?" Chu Liuxiang asked.
Yan Liang raised an eyebrow and said, "I am attached to the mortal world. With Senior Brother Wuhua not here, there is no one to bring me food up the mountain."
Ji Bingyan glanced at the fruit pits beside him and sneered, "It's not that you're greedy for worldly things, it's that you're greedy for food, isn't it?"
Yan Liang: "Almost there, almost there. Food is the most important thing for people; one cannot become a Buddha without eating."
Ji Bingyan: "...Are you really a monk?"
Yan Liang: "This humble monk has already returned to secular life."
Ji Bingyan: "It's a joke that Shaolin Temple has a disciple like you."
Yan Liang: "I am no longer a disciple of Shaolin Temple."
Xiao Ji always seemed to be very angry with this young monk.
Chu Liuxiang listened to their heated argument from the side, touched his nose, and couldn't help but laugh.
Hu Tiehua, on the other hand, was itching to see Ji Bingyan's expression as he listened to the conversation beside him.
He was often so angry with Ji Bingyan that he couldn't speak. Now that he had a rare opportunity, even if it wasn't him, he had to get up and take a look.
Seeing the expression on his face, Chu Liuxiang stuffed another fruit into Hu Tiehua's mouth: "Little Hu, you can't rush things. There's no use in being impatient."
“He’s not anxious about when we can move, but rather about the expression on my face,” Ji Bingyan said coldly.
Chu Liuxiang touched his nose and watched as Hu Tiehua and Ji Bingyan started arguing again over this, and smiled helplessly from the side.
They were clearly about to venture into a perilous place, but in this situation, it was more like a picnic.
Yan Liang leaned against the cabin wall, lazily watching the few people on the ship, in a pleasant mood.
No matter where you are, it's always better to be in a lively atmosphere.
The author has something to say: No matter what you do, you can't afford to be stingy with money. I've figured that out, so—
This pigeon is here to plunder your Jinjiang coins! (doge)
Speaking of which, when I was almost finished writing this chapter, I looked at the original work and was shocked and devastated to find that I had misremembered a part of the plot, so I had to delete it and start over...
More than a thousand words...
[Life is meaningless.jpg] Thank you to all the little angels who voted for me or watered my plants between 2020-01-28 22:41:21 and 2020-01-29 22:39:41!
Thank you to the little angel who threw the landmine: one live little angel has been caught;
Thank you to the little angels who watered the nutrient solution: Natsume Mio 2 bottles; Sakura no Yuki 1 bottle;
Thank you so much for your support! I will continue to work hard!
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